Fast
by Adam Kadmon
Summary: Rei adopts a kitten... with adorable consequences!


Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion.

/\/\/\/\

It was not seen as neglect because no one who saw it wanted to think of it as that. The little girl alone in the cluttered lab halls or weaving through rooms of dense machinery by herself became such a common sight it ceased to raise any concern. She was quiet and careful and did not interfere and everyone worked around her like she was another piece of equipment. When she was not alone she was with her guardian and that cemented how acceptable the arrangement was.

Reconstruction in Hakone was a wave of steel and concrete that swept the unpleasant image of homelessness from sight and things like orphans living in abandoned buildings and foraging through garbage and selling their bodies were swept from thought too. A little girl walking the streets by herself was no longer something ignored out of unease or pity or fear but out of indifference. There was nothing wrong with it because it couldn't be wrong anymore.

Rei looked up. The sky was pale ash. The air was cold and stale, and the clouds did not move. She could not see the sun.

Machine sounds spiked her ears. Somewhere past the amalgamation of old and new structures indistinct men yelled indistinct things over the growl of earthmovers. From the lab the city was bright and clean, filled with a lackadaisical optimism spawned from creation. Three blocks away construction pushed against the empty husks of the old city, an army of skeletal new building frames purging all memories of the fallen and disgraced former civilization. Beyond that was blight.

Rei left GEHIRN and crossed into the reconstruction zone. Her apartment was in the west district near the lab's external secondary power grid. Development spread unevenly in prioritized spurts, balancing the city's level of decay with the money, time and manpower at the lab's disposal, and Rei's path home took her through a low priority section of old Hakone. She passed a cluster of newly erected housing units for lab technicians and entered the hollow carcass of an ancient shopping arcade. The sidewalk's pressure treated stone became cracked and uncertain.

A broken grey street opened before her. Something small and furry sat close to the ground on her right, partially obscured by the dim shade of a broken shipping crate. A thin tail flicked irritably behind it.

"Cat," Rei said, identifying the animal.

It tilted its head to observe her with one lazy green eye. She moved forward and the cat rose and trotted into an alley between a dead boutique and an abandoned convenience store. The passage led to another street, but was blocked by a tall wire fence halfway through. The cat was at its left corner, coiled into a tight ball of dirty grey fur. Its eyes flashed in the murky shadows.

Rei entered the alley and approached the cat. It pushed its spine up in a bristling arch and exhaled a low whining growl. It showed its teeth. Rei walked closer.

The cat waited until she was a yard away then flowed to her right on feathery paws, low to the ground. Rei's light feet anticipated the escape and she was able to grab the cat around its chest. It hissed and spat. Warped needle claws opened the skin on her hands and forearms.

"You are emaciated," she said. She tensed her hands and felt yielding ribs beneath shabby fur. "I will feed you."

Rei stood and kept her arms fixed before her to keep the cat from scratching her face. She lacked any means of luring it to her home and no secondary residence to keep it. There were no containers in the immediate vicinity sturdy enough to transport a struggling animal. She would have to carry it to her apartment and lock it in a secure room until she acquired a suitable meal.

She held it, feeling the weight of a living thing in her hands.

"I am your Director now," Rei said. "You will obey me."

/\/\/\/\

Fast

/\/\/\/\

"Where did you get these?" Gendo asked, looking at the thin scabbed lines on her arms.

"A cat."

"How did you get these?"

"The cat scratched me."

Gendo pursed his lips. He heard Fuyutsuki softly chuckle once behind him.

"They'll have to be disinfected," the old man said. He produced a bottle of rubbing alcohol and several cotton swabs. He approached the girl, perched on a stool. "This will sting," he told Rei, holding a thin arm.

"It is unpleasant," she affirmed, but did not physically react.

The lab they used to maintain Rei the last handful of years was so dark and miserable no human being should rightly be treated in it. Gendo let the moment pass, burnt to sour memory. Another moment passed and he thought the situation was perfectly appropriate.

He made the old man play janitor to the Angel-thing's physical upkeep. Gendo never had the aptitude. Privately it fascinated him; he devoured medical and anatomy texts when he was young, awed at the fragile complexity of the human body. It was built with so many redundancies and fail-safes yet the smallest imbalance could destroy the entire system.

Whipping up an artificial body and jamming a god's pilfered soul into it required a certain degree of scientific proficiency. Gendo was proud at having the foresight to let Fuyutsuki stick around.

The old man finished cleaning the wounds and covered them with strips of gauze. "Be careful around cats from now on, okay?"

The gentle admonishment, delivered with a grandfather's patronizing smile, struck Gendo with such naked artifice he froze until Rei spoke.

"Director?"

"Yes," he agreed absently. "Be careful around cats." He regained his title. He was Director. "Rei, wait for me by the elevator."

She nodded and slid off her stool. He did not give a reason because he did not have to. She left.

"I never imagined I'd add pediatrician to my resume," Fuyutsuki remarked. He began cleaning up. "Strange times."

"Understated like a true pediatrician."

"Still against bringing Akagi into the fold?"

"Absolutely." Gendo noticed his companion's eyebrow arch at his tone. "That woman is a necessity but not a long-term investment."

"Thinking of trading in for the newer model?" Fuyutsuki gracefully pressed on without pausing. "Rei's in good shape. Better than I expected. Aside from this cat incident. At least she told you the truth when you asked."

"Why wouldn't she?"

"Well, I have to admit it surprised me when the surveillance team reported Rei carrying a stray cat home with her. I doubt it was something you ordered her to do."

"I never ordered her not to," Gendo countered.

"I suppose a certain degree of independence is necessary and unavoidable. She does come from very willful stock."

"I did not expect it," Gendo conceded, failing to contain a frown.

"She will need wits to pilot. Micromanaging a human's every action simply isn't realistic." A humorless grin shifted the wrinkles on his face. "I suppose the same applies to things that look human, too."

Gendo shifted on his feet. The room was stifling. "I'm not taking this lightly."

"I never assumed you would." Fuyustuki finished returning the medical supplies to their rightful places and peeled off his latex gloves. "The shorter a dog's leash the faster it can bite you."

"Without a leash it will bite anyone in sight."

/\/\/\/\

Rei researched what cats ate and found nothing suitable in her apartment or available under the provisions she was allowed from GEHIRN. She had no funds to purchase cat food. Asking the Director for aid never occurred to her since he would not trouble himself over things not related to the Project.

Left with no other options she smuggled small portions of food she discreetly gathered from the lab. The cat sniffed at them, ate some and flicked its tail angrily at others. It threw up twice. Rei cleaned it up because it smelled bad. She tried to clean the cat up because it smelled bad. It clawed her again.

On the third day she returned home and found the cat preening over a bloody mouse. Its small rodent torso was gouged open and small rodent things spilled out of it. Much of the meat was gone, irregular bundles of fragile-looking bones piled in a red mess. The cat's chest was puffed out in pride. It cleaned its bloody paws in leisurely condescension.

Rei stayed awake that night. The cat took up its familiar post under her bed, hidden in dusty shadow beyond the reach of her arms. Long after the moon swam out of her window's sight a fuzzy mouse emerged from a hole she never noticed near the bathroom and travelled a cautious path across her floor. There were scraps of the food she took from the lab littering her apartment as well as small dark pellets she now realized were mouse defecations.

The mouse nibbled a hunk of orange peel bigger than its body. After a few bites its head jerked up, scanning the room with empty bead eyes before returning to the peel. And then Rei watched magic as the cat sprang from behind the mouse and chased it to the corner of her room between the broken heater and her small refrigerator. The mouse made a lot of squeaking noises. There was a long moment when neither moved. Then the cat leaned to the left and took a slow step forward. The mouse darted to the right and the cat brought a claw down on its back with blurring force. The mouse squeaked and the cat's paw blurred the air again. Then the cat's teeth swooped down to crush the life out the mouse.

Rei breathed again. She never noticed when or how the cat got from beneath her bed to the other side of the room behind the mouse. It was magic the way it moved. It was magic the way it took what it wanted. The attack, from the pounce to the kill, was less than fifteen seconds. Rei was certain she witnessed something amazing and terrible and profound. And the cat ate, oblivious to her.

/\/\/\/\

She watched the floor every night. She left more food. Sometimes a mouse came, sometimes a mouse didn't. The cat began each night beneath her bed and Rei stayed each night above it.

Sometimes the cat played with the mouse, batting it with paws that never missed. Sometimes it caught the mouse on the first pounce. If it didn't the cat used its advantage in size to direct its prey to a corner or bottleneck, offer a single chance for escape, then killed the mouse for taking it. Rei watched each performance with unwavering attention.

The cat desired a meal, found a means to that end, and employed it to fulfill the desire. Location and timing varied but the underlying strategy remained constant. It was efficient and focused, mercilessly single-minded in the pursuit of its goal. Disobedience meant death. Compliance meant death. The cat was the will of god inside Rei's apartment. Any mouse that fell in its sight was already under its command.

It was the same way humans caught animals. It was the same way humans caught humans. It was the same way humans caught the Evangelion things. It was the same way the Director caught the Akagi woman. The Director and the cat shaped situations to force their prey to choose the path they wanted them to choose. Limit available options and behavior can be predicted and controlled.

The Director and the cat did not distinguish between the humans or mice in their sights. They sustained their existences at the expense of others. Anything they could dominate was devoured without hesitation.

Rei watched the cat trap another mouse. It was the same way she trapped the cat back in the alley. She watched the cat amuse itself with the struggling mouse before tearing it open. It ignored her as it ate.

/\/\/\/\

Her prey moved this way and that way but she had blocked all routes of escape. Only her will sustained its existence, only her will decided if it would suffer or be put out of its misery quickly. Did the cat enjoy this mastery over life? Was she supposed to? Did the Director?

She wanted to know what the Director knew, to know the same kind of power he knew. She thought she was the cat's master but it proved it did not need her to live. The mobius strip of dependence and existence twisted before her, clear and bright. GEHIRN provided the Director the means to purchase the food Rei took to lure the mice that fed the cat that she took from the ruined street as she walked home to the apartment the Director granted her with his position at GEHIRN that provided the means to sustain her life and feed the mice that fed the cat.

But the cat survived before she captured it. The mice survived before she left food for them. The Director survived before her. GEHIRN survived before her. She alone existed outside the web of interdependency, neither affecting it meaningfully nor accomplishing anything within its scope. She was different from the rest. The others all struggled in a fruitless race to devour one another. They were all the same to each other.

Her prey skittered desperately beneath her eyes. No better or worse than the rest. Nothing worth staying her hand.

"Rei," Gendo said. "What are you doing?"

She looked up at him across the dinner table.

"Eating," she said. Her hand still made the carrot bounce along her plate. She waited for him to say he understood and return to his meal.

"Use your utensils."

Rei brought the carrot to her mouth and bit it in half. She picked up a knife with chubby fingers.

Gendo cast his eyes down in thought. He resumed eating.

/\/\/\/\

The cat lay on its side by the bed. Its tongue stuck lazily from its mouth, its spine was curved, its legs were thrust forward, frozen in rigor mortis. Jumbled guts spilled from a tear in its stomach.

The security agent lay face down on the dirty floor. His sunglasses were spider-webbed from the weight of his skull. His mouth was open a sliver, deep red seeping out. The knife wounds carving his abdomen open leaked freely. His suit hung on his body, dark and heavy with blood.

Gendo entered the apartment and stood at the entrance to the bedroom. The agents flanking him waited for his permission to act.

Rei looked up at him from the floor and wiped her mouth. Her face and forearm smeared with red.

"Hello, Director."

/\/\/\/\

"Hello, old hag."

/\/\/\/\

"Keeping her off-base was a mistake. You acting as her guardian raised too many questions to begin with."

"There was no other way. Your public involvement has to be kept minimal. Keeping her here would raise suspicion as well."

"Still…"

"The precautionary measures will be… more precise this time."

"I'll defer to you in this matter, Director. I mean, Commander. Excuse me."

"Titles are meaningless in this place."

"I'm activating her without the neural blocks. Her psyche will be more susceptible to suggestion. The system wasn't intended for this level of direct manipulation but given the alternatives I'd say we don't have much of a choice. Just be ready to accept certain… inconsistencies from the first iteration. In theory each new vessel will fit the cargo a bit differently."

"You've assured me it will be satisfactory. That is enough."

"… Partial transfer is clean. She's activating now."

A world of orange blood opened and a lump of stolen flesh rushed to meet him. He watched it take its first breath free of the LCL's amniotic internment.

"Your name is Rei Ayanami. I am your commander, Gendo Ikari. You will obey me and fulfill my every order without question."

The pale thing shaped like a girl wearing his wife's face stared up at him with wide red eyes.

"You do not eat the flesh of any animal. You dislike it."

/\/\/\/\

End

Author notes: It's a fact. I'll never be a suspense or mystery writer.

I always wondered who made Rei. Naoko seemed surprised by her appearance in the series, though she did say she was "replaceable". I talked to Sideris about this a while ago and he posited Fuyutsuki might have been responsible. It's hard to swallow that the Prof didn't at least know about her origins. Though he did seem shocked at Kaworu's identity.

I finished this before realizing how absurd it is for Rei to live alone at this point in the series. Way to craft a convincing story, Adam. She's like, what, four? Or even younger since she's a clone. Just keep suspending that disbelief, like mine apparently was.

OMAKE

"You're serious about this?" Fuyutsuki asked, managing to keep his voice steady. "This isn't just some ploy against Kiel or the UN?"

"This is no ruse," Gendo replied, hunched over his desk, his chin supported by one hand. He was still working out the kinks on his indifferent yet intimidating Gendo Pose ™. "The data has been analyzed, and the MAGI are in agreement."

"But… abandoning Instrumentality and Project E for… "

"Yes. A restaurant chain." He shifted to a one-hand-on-top-of-the-other configuration, jutting his chin forward. "The world is still in the throes of chaos from Second Impact, Professor. Unemployment, homelessness, disease, poverty, crime… mankind is afraid and hungry for order. And gourmet meals at low, low prices."

"But Ikari!" Fuyutsuki pleaded. "Cloning gods and planning the destruction of the human race is one thing, but serving people stray cats is truly monstrous! And unsanitary!"

He gestured around the office, cluttered with promotional materials, resumes from chefs, and several design blueprints. Preliminary concepts lined the walls on placards, ranging from a family-style restaurant featuring a laughing Gendo carrying Rei on his shoulder, to a bar and grill/strip club tentatively called Ikari's Cat House (slogan: "Steaming hot pussy served twenty-four hours a day.")

"Granted, but I've been thinking: Being mushed together with the rest of humanity isn't a very attractive prospect. Or would you like to share your every thought regarding my deceased wife?"

"Point taken. But the Committee won't stand for this, Ikari."

"Irrelevant," Gendo said. "By the time they realize out intent we will have amassed a global food service empire that will rival SEELE and anything the Americans' lust for filler meat can muster. It's time we wrote our own scenario. On the mangy diseased hides of Japan's bountiful stray cat population."

He slid his chin behind his hands to conceal a smirk and realized the position allowed him to appear impassive while allowing freedom of expression. For the first time in his life Gendo Ikari felt genuinely comfortable in his own skin.


End file.
